The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (79 page)

“Malachai was limited only by what he could envision himself envisioning. He was limited by his disbelief in the scope of his ability. This is the true message of the Eleventh Esoteric.”

Raine drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Here was a man whom he’d vilified for three hundred years, and instead of laying blame, instead of requiring Raine’s contrition… Instead, here Björn was trying to help him understand that Raine hadn’t failed him at all.

He looked out over the valley as tears came unbidden.

He thought of the thousands of times he’d spoken out against Björn, of the heinous things he’d accused him of. He thought of all the people who believed Björn van Gelderan was a traitor—in no small part due to Raine’s own account of but one side of that coin. Truly—Björn had told them nothing, and perhaps he had some culpability in his lack of explanation—but the bulk of the defamatory content had been created by Raine and Alshiba in their attempts to craft explanation out of the inexplicable—and of course they’d supposed the worst.

Even though their conscience had whispered otherwise for three hundred years.

Who then was the traitor here in truth? Björn, who continued his courageous work in care of the realm, or Raine D’Lacourte, who undermined Björn’s work with seditious rumors?

“What makes a good man, Raine?” Björn asked quietly. “It is in the way he treats others? Is it his generosity or compassion? Is it his good work? You are a truthreader, you know men’s minds. Do these things make men good?”

Raine brusquely wiped a tear from his eye. “I don’t know,” he answered, feeling only the heavy weight of guilt pressing him down, suffocating him.

“I believe such traits do comprise a good man,” Björn observed, “but in my view, a
great
man needs but one truly notable attribute.”

Raine fought back the clenching feeling in his chest to ask hoarsely, “Which is?”

“The willingness to accept responsibility for things he didn’t cause.”

For some reason, this made Raine have to work even harder to hold back his grief. “Brother…” he whispered wretchedly, lifting his eyes in the last to meet Björn’s, “I have wronged you so.”

“No more than I wronged you, Raine.”

But Raine knew this was untrue. He bowed his head and clenched his jaw, feeling threadbare and tawdry beneath the Fifth Vestal’s gaze.

“This contrition is unnecessary, Raine.” Björn took him by the shoulders and drew him into an embrace, brother to brother, Vestal to Vestal. “Don’t you think I have regrets? I can’t begin to list them all.” He squeezed Raine’s shoulders and drew away, capturing his tormented gaze. “But we simply haven’t the time for regret. Every day is a new day, a new choice, a new beginning. This is the essence of Adendigaeth, which we have just observed. This idea that tomorrow brings forth another chance to live life anew, no matter what has come before.”

“Yes,” Raine whispered. “That is true.”

Thunder sounded above them then, deep and hollow, the cracking open of the very heavens to emit the rain. It started as a downpour and quickly deepened to a deluge, and before they had even looked up they were drenched.

“What say you to this game, brother?” Björn asked through the storm. “Will you join me in it?”

Raine never imagined in all his life that he would’ve said yes.

But he did.

“Neighboring kings, like witches and spies, cannot be trusted.”

- Radov abin Hadorin, Ruling Prince of M’Nador

Gydryn val Lorian
, King of Dannym, stood at the edge of a marble table staring at the vellum in his hand. He was alone in his chambers in Radov’s palace—as alone as he could be with fifty knights surrounding his rooms—but he dared take no chances, not since the bird from Morin d’Hain had found them aboard the
Sea Eagle
a day north of Tal’Shira.

Gydryn looked at the letter from Morin one last time, recalling fully the words scribed upon it. Dangerous words, laying waste to a litany of lies. Yet they were few, in truth: the whisper of a long-standing alliance between Morwyk and Radov of M’Nador had reached Morin’s ears. He hadn’t conclusive proof, and the information had come second-hand, funneled through intermediaries loyal to Raine D’Lacourte, but Morin believed it.

And in his heart, Gydryn did as well.

Morin’s missive was void of the Spymaster’s usual extrapolations and deductions, but Gydryn didn’t need an exhaustive summary to reach the same conclusions as his Spymaster. And if the information Morin gave him was accurate, then only one conclusion truly mattered: the Akkadian
Emir Zafir bin Safwan al Abdul-Basir
was not his enemy.

Radov was.

It was an acerbic truth, one that brought a foul turbulence to his stomach and a lingering ache to his heart. Perhaps he’d known it all along. His wife, Errodan, often cautioned him that good men shied away from seeing the evil in others. Gydryn knew he was culpable in this failing, guilty of being too lenient, too merciful toward those who sought power; guilty of the hubris inherent in believing that treason and betrayal were not the bywords of
his
noble houses.

But there was no dissembling that Radov needed Dannym’s army and had likely gone to great lengths to secure it eight years ago. Gydryn was not so foolish as to imagine that the Ruling Prince would now just let them leave.

There were steps to be taken, necessary sacrifices. He wouldn’t allow Radov to take control of his army, and he most certainly was not going to let Stephan val Tryst have his kingdom—for whatever else was certain, should the Duke of Morwyk march to power, the Prophet Bethamin would be treading on his train.

Lowering his hand with Morin’s dangerous missive crumpled within it, Gydryn walked toward a wall of screen doors carved of honey-hued wood, which opened upon a balcony and the sea. The water reflected a strange color in this far southern princedom, a startling turquoise that rapidly faded to azure blue, so different from the charcoal seas of his home. The king leaned against the doorframe, his grey-eyed gaze deeply troubled as he looked to the east. His thoughts were snared by the Prophet…even as an alarming number of his subjects had been.

Dannym’s peoples embraced many faiths. The Highlanders of Iverness worshipped a panoply of earth gods and goddesses, spirits and sprites, paying homage to trees and rivers and standing stones. They always seemed about some festival or another that involved dancing half-naked and burning boughs of stinking herbs for who knew what purpose. Gydryn didn’t understand their faith, but it seemed to keep them happy.

His wife’s people believed strongly in the Storm God and his Concubine, and the peoples of the southlands followed the Veneisean Virtues as often as their own Lord of Crows and Sparrows. In Calgaryn and its surrounding duchies, the folk mainly followed the old ways of their Agasi forefathers who’d founded the kingdom centuries ago, a faith closest to the Adept religion espoused in the
Sobra I’ternin
.

All of these faiths and more besides, disparate though they were, had somehow coexisted harmoniously in his kingdom, its peoples tolerating each other, often laughing at the others’ ‘odd’ rituals, but never condemning them. Until now.

Bethamin was a scourge upon the realm. His religion seemed antipathetic to faiths of all kinds, appealing instead to the baser instincts of mankind. His doctrine sowed distrust and malcontent among all who followed it, and Gydryn would condone no such filth in his kingdom.

Returning to his marble desk, the king set one corner of Morin’s missive over a low-burning candle and watched the flame take. Holding the paper while it burned, his grey eyes observed the inked letters as they spread and vanished, overtaken by wings of blackening flame. If only the lies those words hinted at might be so easily dispelled.

When naught but a scrap remained, Gydryn set the charred paper onto a silver dish, poured a clear liquor upon it, and set the candle to the spirit. Flames seared upward, and heat washed the pepper-grey hair of his beard as the charred paper burned to ash. When only a tarry sludge remained, the king wiped the dish clean with a scrap of linen and tossed the latter onto the smoldering coals in the hearth.

Gydryn saw his own kingdom facing such a charred and blackened end if Morwyk took power. He’d lain awake long hours into the night, every night as they’d sailed south, the steady rush of waves past the hull too often seeming the muted roar of burning flames, the creaking of masts and rigging the steady disintegration of his kingdom.

Before Morin’s missive reached him, he and
Loran val Whitney
had spent long hours behind locked doors—hours spent, in the main, arguing. The Duke of Marion had strong views, and their decades-long friendship made him bold in declaring them.

“I nae like it, Sire,” Loran had so often protested. He was a big man, like most of his Highland brethren, broad of chest, with a mane of black hair striped through with grey and fierce blue eyes that often flashed as sharply as the kingdom blade ever present at his hip. He seemed a caged bear even in the generous space of the
Sea Eagle’s
royal cabin. “We shouldna’ be goin’ back there—should nae be sacrificin’ our brothers to the insatiable greed of a craven bastard like Radov abin Hadorin.”

“What would you have me do?” Gydryn had repeatedly growled in return, so often sunk into a low-slung armchair, the vantage giving him a view of the Fire Sea beyond the cabin’s mullioned windows. It was that or watch Loran pace restlessly back and forth until his head began to ache. “
Shade and darkness
, Loran, would you have me break a pact that has held three kingdoms together for centuries?”

“Yea, Sire, if ye must.”

“I’m not prepared to do that.”

“By the bloodless horns of Herne, ye’ll lose yer kingdom if ye can’t find some compromise with yer honor, Sire! It’ll drag ye down to the depths and the rest of us w’ye—cause ye know we shan’t be abandonin’ ye, even to the ends of the realm!”

“A king with no honor is a stain upon his kingdom, Loran.”

“A kingdom with no rightful king stands a barren shore, Sire.”

And so it had gone, round and round, neither of them gaining purchase against the other’s views. All day in argument with his General of the East, all night in conference with his conscience. No peace could be found in any quarter.

And then, after a month of these contentious deliberations, Morin’s bird had found them, and all those hours, all those words, became moot.

He’d told Loran nothing of the letter—the Duke of Marion was already raring to leave M’Nador, and Gydryn dared not give him room or reason to make a press. No, they couldn’t just withdraw their forces from the princedom, withdraw their support of Radov—not without more bloodshed. Gydryn understood this too well. 

Resting one hand on the carved limestone mantel in Radov’s palace, the king chose an ivory-handled poker and nudged the crisping linen back onto the coals.

How had his life come to this?

Once he’d had three strong sons, a loving wife and queen who held his heart in thrall, a kingdom at peace. What sinister spirit had plucked the thread of his life from its pleasant pattern and rewoven it elsewhere among the strands of iniquitous men? What crossroad had he chosen that his path became so darkly treacherous, so full of treason and dishonor that he lost two of his beloved sons upon it and must needs sacrifice the companionship of his wife to protect his third? What gods had he angered that they exacted such vengeance upon his house?

The questions were infinite, but the answers…well, there were no answers to the questions of why. There was only the
what
that remained. What he would do. What he could do. What he must do.

Gydryn replaced the poker in its place and returned to the marble desk. Another letter remained there, blotted and dry. His personal seal pressed after his signature marked the letter as an authentic statement in his own hand.

He’d written some strange things upon that page, unexpected things, the kind of things a man writes only when he anticipates death across the next rise. He’d addressed the letter to a man he’d met only once, but he trusted the captain to his duty.

A knock sounded upon the door, and Gydryn looked up as two soldiers entered. The first wore the red livery of his personal guard and stood crisply at attention. The second wore a short-sleeved hauberk over linen and looked travel-worn and battle-stained. His baldric and belt both carried the val Lorian eagle engraved in the leather, while his tanned skin bespoke long hours beneath the relentless desert sun.

“The Captain Jasper val Renly, Sire,” announced the first man, the king’s personal guard, “at your request.”

“Thank you, Daniel. Please send for Loran now.”

“Your will be done, Sire.” Daniel saluted and left, closing the door.

“Come, Jasper,” the king murmured, observing the captain’s exhausted state. “Break your fast with me.” He motioned the soldier into a sunlit room whose tall doors opened upon the same long balcony. A meal awaited upon a table draped in fine linen, but Gydryn’s appetite had abandoned him in the Fire Sea. He offered the meal to his captain instead. “You rode through the night?” he asked as he indicated for Jasper to sit.